This Is Only a Test by B.J. Hollars

Author:B.J. Hollars
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2016-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

People fear any number of things, only some of which make logical sense. Nevertheless, we have a name for all of them. If you fear bellybuttons, then you suffer from omphalophobia. If you fear kitchen appliances (including the fridge), then you are an oikophobic. We have even given a name to those who fear nothing but the possibility of procuring a fear: they are phobophobics.

According to psychologist Nandor Fodor, claustrophobia—a fear from which Bobby Watson apparently did not suffer until his fatal moments—is defined as the “widespread morbid dread of confined spaces, small rooms, caves, tunnels, elevators, or pressing crowds.” Dr. Robert Campbell later revised the definition to include additional claustrophobia-inducing locales (“theaters, classrooms, boats, or narrow streets”).

Neither definition makes mention of refrigerators.

If you were to ask a sufferer of claustrophobia to name additional omissions, he might mention cellars, airplanes, cars, churches, roller coasters, or the daily fear of wearing a necktie.

Imagine being buried alive in a hole. It’s like that.

While the majority of mid-twentieth-century psychologists could easily diagnose the phobia, they struggled to gauge the degree to which a patient suffered. As a result, in 1979 psychologists developed the claustrophobia scale, a twenty-question assessment that deduced the acuteness of one’s fear. Participants were asked to rate their anxiety or avoidance on a number of uncomfortable scenarios, including “entering a windowless lavatory and locking the door,” “riding a small elevator by yourself,” and “being outdoors in a fog when you can only see a few yards in front of you.”

Once more, refrigerators were left off the scale.

When tracing claustrophobia’s roots, Nandor Fodor looked first to one’s true beginning: birth. In his 1949 book, The Search for the Beloved: A Clinical Investigation of the Trauma of Birth and Pre-Natal Conditioning, Fodor provides an in-depth description of the brief yet horrifying moment all newborns share; the moment in which the child must take his or her first breath independent of the mother. “If this interval is too prolonged, the baby will turn blue and suffocate,” Fodor explains. “If the baby lives to breathe, it has tasted death by suffocation.”

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